The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel eBook

III

At the top of the Rue Berthier the party halted.
On ahead—­some two hundred metres farther—­Yvonne
Lebeau’s little figure, with her ragged skirt
pulled over her head and her bare feet pattering in
the mud, was seen crossing one of those intermittent
patches of light formed by occasional flickering street
lamps, and then was swallowed up once more by the
inky blackness beyond.

The Rue Berthier is a long, narrow, ill-paved and
ill-lighted street, composed of low and irregular
houses, which abut on the line of fortifications at
the back, and are therefore absolutely inaccessible
save from the front.

Midway down the street a derelict house rears ghostly
debris of roofs and chimney-stacks upward to the sky.
A tiny square of yellow light, blinking like a giant
eye through a curtainless window, pierced the wall
of the house. Roger pointed to that light.

“That,” he said, “is the quarry
where our fox has run to earth.”

No one said anything; but the dank night air seemed
suddenly alive with all the passions of hate let loose
by thirty beating hearts.

The Scarlet Pimpernel, who had tricked them, mocked
them, fooled them so often, was there, not two hundred
metres away; and they were thirty to one, and all
determined and desperate.

The darkness was intense.

Silently now the party approached the house, then
again they halted, within sixty metres of it.

“Hist!”

The whisper could scarce be heard, so low was it,
like the sighing of the wind through a misty veil.

“Who is it?” came in quick challenge from
Roger.

“I—­Yvonne Lebeau!”

“Is he there?” was the eager whispered
query.

“Not yet. But he may come at any moment.
If he saw a crowd round the house, mayhap he would
not come.”

“He cannot see a crowd. The night is as
dark as pitch.”

“He can see in the darkest night,” and
the girl’s voice sank to an awed whisper, “and
he can hear through a stone wall.”

Instinctively, Roger shuddered. The superstitious
fear which the mysterious personality of the Scarlet
Pimpernel evoked in the heart of every Terrorist had
suddenly seized this man in its grip.

Try as he would, he did not feel as valiant as he
had done when first he emerged at the head of his
party from under the portico of the Cordeliers Club,
and it was with none too steady a voice that he ordered
the girl roughly back to the house. Then he turned
once more to his men.

The plan of action had been decided on in the Club,
under the presidency of Robespierre; it only remained
to carry the plans through with success.

From the side of the fortifications there was, of
course, nothing to fear. In accordance with military
regulations, the walls of the houses there rose sheer
from the ground without doors or windows, whilst the
broken-down parapets and dilapidated roofs towered
forty feet above the ground.